Keeping Watch
by Ashfae
Summary: Alistair is just a little obsessed. Set between the kiss and spending the night. Alistair/f!PC, details about the f!PC deliberately left vague


Alistair can't sleep. He hasn't slept well for over a week, and it's beginning to be a source of personal affront as well as an incredible inconvenience. He remembers very well a conversation he had as a boy, back when he was still running wild around Arl Eamon's castle. A bastard child doesn't make friends easily. To the nobles he was tainted, illegitimate and unwanted. To the servants he was another noble. To the other children he was an easy target. So he'd made friends with the guards. This might have been his inclination in any circumstance, and his enthusiasm for fighting and swordplay had endeared him to some of the soldiers around the castle. One in particular, Merris, had answered any questions about a warrior's life with a seriousness not often shown to a hyperactive ten-year-old. Alistair had asked once what was the most important thing for a soldier to learn, and been completely surprised by the answer.

"Sleep," Merris had said. "Learn to sleep. Anytime, anywhere, in any circumstances." The look on Alistair's face must have clearly shown his disgust and suspicion--Merris wasn't in cahoots with the castle nurses, was he? They were always after him to go to bed when there were more interesting things to do!--and Merris had chuckled, then turned serious again. "Swords, axes, shields--those are just tools, boy. A fighter's true weapons are his brain and his body. If you want to be a warrior, it's your responsibility to keep them in top condition, so that whenever you're called to action--and it could be anytime, when you least expect it--you're ready. That means learning to sleep when you can. Sometimes safe opportunities will be in short supply, so you learn to sleep no matter what the circumstances--through noise, through fear, through anything."

Young Alistair had taken this very much to heart; the nursemaids had been astonished at how easy it was to get him to go to bed after that. And he'd found over the years that Merris had been correct. It took a certain amount of discipline to sleep at night knowing that you were going to face darkspawn hordes the next day. At least, at first it had. Blights were exhausting times to live through, and nowadays he's usually tired enough at the end of the day that succumbing to sleep was a pleasure whenever he had the opportunity.

Until recently.

Alistair turns over, _again_, trying and completely failing to get comfortable and willing sleep to come. It doesn't; it eludes him, just as it has for days, and finally with an annoyed grunt he sits up and stretches and accepts his fate. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he moves to the front of his tent to engage in what is rapidly becoming a nightly ritual. He reaches a hand forward and opens the tent flap--just a crack, just large enough to see outside to where he knows she'll be sitting. And she is. He half-wonders if she does it on purpose, sitting in more or less the same places by the fire, easy for him to see. He _knows _that he's started setting up his tent in the camp so that it faces the campfire, for just this reason. But perhaps not, perhaps their fearless leader just likes sitting by the fire. For warmth, or some other sane reason.

Lately, Alistair feels anything but sane.

She's silhouetted against the fire, looking out into the night. Keeping watch. He can't see her expression, not that it matters; he knows what it will be, he knows all her expressions now, even the ones she wears when she thinks no one is looking. The dog is keeping her company, lying on his back so that she can idly rub his stomach. Just today Alistair had asked, "So, if I roll on my back and wave my hands and feet in the air and look up at you hopefully, would you rub my stomach too?" And she'd laughed and walked away before he had a chance to say _No, wait, actually I kind of meant that..._

He has never felt so much like an awkward, lovesick adolescent. Not even when he _was _an adolescent, and what excuse does he have now?

Well, every excuse really, what can you expect when you spend every day with an astonishing, capable woman, who's so beautiful it takes your breath away? And she even _likes _him, she _laughs at his jokes_, how unlikely is that? Humor has been Alistair's friend and defence mechanism his whole life, one minute letting him deflect problems and another minute cheering him when things go wrong. As they so often do. But now his sense of humor has another purpose: making _her _laugh. He can still remember the first time she laughed at something he said, the incredulous surprise at his outrageousness followed by delight. He remembers how his heart twinged then and there, as a small part of his brain said _Oh boy, you are in trouble now... _He goes out of his way to make her laugh whenever he can, just to see that delight flash across her face again.

And sometimes that's the most wonderful thing he can imagine, just to see her briefly happy because of _him_, and sometimes it's so, so not enough, he wants more, he _craves _more, and he's got no experience with any of this and has no idea what he's doing and barely knows what it is he craves except _her _and _more_. Well, he has ideas of course, even in a monastery he wasn't _that _sheltered, he knows all the, er, mechanics. Though that knowledge seems completely inadequate somehow now that he's faced with someone he might actually want to...be serious with.

He did manage to kiss her, last week. How he managed he has no idea. He'd somehow--in his bumbling, idiotic way, and thank the Maker she hadn't dismissed him out of hand for that alone--told her that he cared about her--has the world _ever _heard such an understatement?--and wondered if she could ever feel the same way. And she'd stammered and said she didn't know, it was too soon, and he'd dared to ask if it was too soon for this and kissed her. That kiss burns in his mind even now, days later. He'd taken her shoulder in his hand--gauntlet--and for a sweet moment that lasted forever and was over far too soon he'd breathed her breath, felt her hand hesitatingly rest on the back of his neck, pulling his head towards hers, and if he could have stopped and stayed in that moment forever he'd be a happy man.

And she'd smiled and teased him, saying she didn't know if it was too soon for that, she'd have to test it a few more times to see. And this time the surprised laughter was his as he promised to arrange it, and he'd gone to sleep that night happily planning ways to kiss her again.

Except that it was so _damnably _hard to arrange. They were hardly ever alone, at camp or outside of it, and he was not so sure of himself--or her--that he was willing to kiss her in public. Not yet, anyway. There'd been a few stolen kisses when they could take them without being seen, a few more the time they'd shared a watch. She'd initiated some of them, even--he smiles and touches his mouth lightly, thinking about the one yesterday, when Leliana had been busy bargaining with a merchant and his fellow Grey Warden had motioned him behind a stack of crates nearby and then pulled his face down to hers and oh _Maker _he hated having to stop. He wants to kiss her forever and never do anything else.

Well, perhaps something else. Because he does want more. Maker's breath, he wants more. His whole body _aches _for her, _all the time _and it's driving him mad and he can't sleep for thinking about her and the things he wants to do and if the nuns back at the monastery knew even a quarter of what goes through his mind these days they'd say the Maker was going strike him with lightning any minute, and he half-wishes it'd happen because at least then he'd have an end to the endless, desperate _wanting_.

His fingers caresses the tent lining as he watches her, and he thinks--again, as he has every night this week--about getting up and going to talk to her. He knows he shouldn't, for so many reasons. He needs to sleep, for heaven's sake; he has the last watch and there are already too few hours between now and when he needs to wake up, and the safety of his companions may depend on him being able to pay attention on watch, on his reflexes, he can't afford to lose sleep the way he has been.

He can't make himself stop looking at her either, though.

Another shadow crosses the fire, and Alistair scowls fiercely to himself; tonight she's sharing the watch with Zevran, and half his dislike for the assassin is sheer envy, not that he'd ever admit it. But it's impossible not to be envious of Zevran, who emerges from battle with darkspawn almost as pristine as when he engaged them, not a hair out of place from his braided hair. Sometimes Alistair thinks the elf is so quick that he dodges sprays of blood; Maker only knows how else he manages to keep so pristine. And he oozes experience and flirtation and charm wherever he goes, no matter what else is going on, and he clearly knows all the things Alistair doesn't and Alistair just _knows _that the elf hits on their Grey Warden leader, because the elf hits on everyone, even Wynne, and even Wynne is charmed by him. What kind of hope can Alistair--clumsy, awkward, Alistair--possibly have, with someone like that around? Even though he isn't that awkward at flirting usually, it's easy to flirt and pretend to be lecherous when you don't expect or even really want anything to come of it; he can flirt with Leliana and tease her about her chequered history with no trouble and they both know nothing will come of it.

So why must words fail him now that he actually needs them? How, how do you go up to someone and say_ Pardon me, but I think you're the most wonderful woman in the world and I want to make love to you and I can't think about anything else anymore _without...well, without her assuming that you're joking again? Or making such a bumbling idiot of yourself with stammering and nervousness that she loses any attraction she might have felt and goes off in search of someone more suave?

Zevran would probably know, damn him, he probably has a hundred lines he could toss off without thinking. But Zevran does things like that without thinking, whereas this is important, so important. Much too important to be flippant about. Alistair could make a joke of it, sure, even he can flirt like that, but it wouldn't convey what he really felt.

And now he's scowling even more because Zevran's kneeling beside her and saying something, and she's laughing, she's _laughing_ at something he said and how _dare _Zevran make her laugh, that's _his_, Alistair's, job. That's his gift, making her laugh, it's the only advantage he has. She's shaking her head while she's laughing though, and the elf moves off and Alistair breathes a sigh of relief and goes back to his silent contemplation.

She's looking out into the night again, and he can imagine her expression; it'll be the quiet, faintly worried one, the one she wears when she's not sure she's really the best person to lead this motley collection they have, when she wonders if they can really accomplish all the tasks they've been given. He'd like to comfort her, take her in his arms and diffuse her worries with laughter or reassurance or support. He could rub her shoulders, maybe. One of his own hands presses against his thigh, thinking about that, about what it might be like to touch her with bare hands. He's barely done that, he's usually encased from head to foot into armor, chainmail or sometimes, worst, full plate. There is no way to surreptitiously remove a gauntlet before touching someone, and you can't just throw a good piece of armor to the side, his weapons instructors would rise from the grave and haunt him if he ever treated his tools with such disrespect. So he's hardly ever touched her, _really _touched her, skin on skin, except for a brief caress of her face during one of those stolen kisses. He remembers that vividly, the softness, the heat, the curve of her cheek and jaw line under his hand. The rest of her must be as soft, as warm, and what would it be like to kiss her with no armor between them, with her body pressed close against his?

And oh Maker, she's _stretching_, she's linked her hands and is stretching them above her head, her back arching like a bow, and it thrusts her breasts out and even though he can't see too clearly given silhouette and clothes in the way he knows he's staring at her chest, and what if there weren't clothes, if he was in front of her while she arched back like that, and he could reach out a hand and feel one of those perfect breasts under his fingers, the curve of it, the heat of her skin, and maybe she'd moan his name and he suddenly realizes he doesn't know all of her expressions after all, he doesn't know what face she'd wear if he was cupping her breasts in his hands, or if her fingers were tracing patterns on his chest, or if a hundred things, and Alistair falls back on his bedroll and groans and grabs a nearby tunic and covers his face with it.

The smell distracts him, because that's another sore point. Underneath armor, even chainmail, goes padding, because otherwise your skin would be a royal mess even if you weren't the bastard son of a king. And because wearing that much weight is heavy and difficult, you sweat like a pig even on the coldest days, which means that any clothes and padding underneath permanently stinks of stale sweat and rust and so do you. Alistair's never been very good at being clean in the best of circumstances--he's never had much motivation--but nowadays are not the best of times, and how do you go up to a woman and invite her to your tent when you reek? He might not know much about romance but even he figures that's a bad plan.

He flings the tunic to one side and stares up at the tent canvas. Inviting her into his tent. He wants to. By Andraste's ashes, he actually wants to, he's sure. It's a terrifying thought, because he honestly never expected to feel like this about anyone; there were a few crushes in the past but nothing like this all-encompassing desire, this obsession that's mixed of friendship and lust and--he knows it's true, it seems incredible but it's true--love. He does love her. She's transformed his whole world and made herself the center of it, he doesn't know how it happened but he can't imagine things any other way now. If that's not love, if that's not what he was waiting for all those times he maybe could have slept with someone and refused because he couldn't take such things lightly, he can't imagine what is.

And he has no idea what he should do about it.

What good can come of this, in the long run? Can there _be _any long run, any future for them? If not, should that stop him? Even without a future there could be a glorious, glorious now. But does he have the right to ask that of her? Does she even want this? Or is he fooling himself? No, surely not, that enthusiasm when he kisses her isn't feigned, that smile she shows whenever she catches him watching her...

It's not just that he wants to make love to her. He wants to share her life, as much of it as he can have in these circumstances. He wants to know all her secrets, not just the good things about her but the petty ones. He wants to hold her at night, to reassure himself that they're both alive and uninjured and not darkspawn food yet. They don't have much time, probably. Every day the urgency of ending the Blight grows, the tension they all feel pushes a little harder. But what little time they can have, he wants.

Seize the day. That's what he's got to do. Or better, seize the dame.

Alistair smiles to himself, wondering if that line would make her laugh, though perhaps it's one he should save for after he's successful.

If he's successful.

Oh, _Maker_.

A sound interrupts his tangled thoughts: footsteps, moving outside his tent. He realizes with some alarm that the first watch is over, she's going to wake her replacement.

Not letting himself think about it, he sits up and goes to his tent flap, opening it.

She starts, looking down at him with surprise. "What are you doing awake?"

_You, I wish?_ Alistair shakes that one off immediately. "Um. Can't sleep." Damn, damn, damn, tongue-tied _again_, how does she _do _this to him

"Oh." They stare at each other in silence for a moment. Then a slow, shy smile crosses her lips. "Maybe you need a good-night kiss?"

Alistair grins and thanks the Maker, who clearly makes provision for love-sick fools. "Maybe I do."

She grins back. "Oh good, I'll go get the mabari, I'm sure he'd be happy to provide you with one..."

He grabs her hand and pulls down--she obligingly drops to her knees--and brings her laughing mouth to his. For a few minutes, his fantasies are realized: her hands bury themselves in his hair, her lips are sweet and open for him, and she fits in his embrace as perfectly as if she'd been designed to be there. The swirl of thought and tangled desire that's kept him awake for hours focuses into a single focused awareness, _I am so in love with this woman_, and there's no frustration or confusion, just wonder that such a thing could have happened, that his life should be so blessed.

And that's enough, for tonight.

She pulls away reluctantly, still smiling. He brings her back for one last, quick brushing of lips. "Good night," he whispers._ Good night, my love._

"Sweet dreams, Alistair."

And they are.


End file.
